Thursday, March 1, 2018

Hello hello! A whole bunch of kids and teachers were murdered in their school recently, and the national conversation has once again turned to What Can We Do? I wrote about it. I fully expected to get some...interesting...responses, and boy did I.

Today, I'd like to focus on one in particular that feels fairly representative of a particular genre of political and social thought that is still all-too prevalent in America. It's based in false premises, racism, sexism, and a sort of peculiar fatalism inherent in so much of the unwillingness to really face the core issues that lead to things like mass shootings.

Anyway, here's the email, annotated!

It struck me that the terrified students prayed when in danger. Remember praying isn't allowed in public schools.

OK I'mma stop you right there: This is a lie. Anyone can still pray in public schools. It simply cannot be an organized/school-sanctioned event, because, you know, for now we still live in a country with separation of church and state, and there are kids from all different religious and non-religious backgrounds in these schools, so prioritizing one flavor of religion over another would be pretty shitty and exclusionary. Also, you don't know how those kids reacted. Some probably prayed, sure. But you don't get to make a blanket statement like that.

And there you have insight into the core cause of our social problems. The Democrats/politicians always want to solve every thing with legislation. That's fine do it. Hasn't stopped the drugs. Burn the NRA down. Fine wont stop the guns.

This is that fatalism I was talking about. Strange, coming from the folks who are usually so hardcore law-and-order, this "why do we bother passing laws at all they don't work" POV. Why anything, indeed?

OK now you're gonna shit on the young Olympic athletes? What the hell, man? Many of them kicked ass in their competitions, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that they've worked harder at this one thing than dear letter writer has at much of anything in his life. What a weird thing to harp on. The rest of his list is pretty standard, alas.

As we have tried to remove God from our culture, broken up the family, have kids who have grown up without even knowing who their father is, minimized responsibility, ignored marriage, shunned religion, and mongralized our cities, what are you going end up with. A society and culture of the above paragraph.

"Mongralized." Gee, what on Earth could he be dog whistling here, I wonder?

This has been a slow progression over many years. I am no sociologist

NO REALLY?! GET OUT. No, really, get out.

but take away the cornerstones of the family and everything that goes with it and the void will be filled by people who have lost their way. We have a very sick country right now, particularity high school kids who are under a lot of social pressure to be liked and fit in. I remember. We wanted progress, we wanted liberalization, at the expense of our core foundations, were getting it. Legislate away. Behavior is in the mind.

Ah, the old "when you're young, you're liberal - when you're older, you're conservative!" line my own aunt tried to use on me a few times. Dude, I'm sorry, but this just means you're getting more bitter and closed off in your old age. Doesn't happen to everyone, thank goodness.